As vehicles streamed north out of Colorado toward the path of totality for Monday’s eclipse, Colorado’s Department of Transportation issued an urgent plea on social media: Please don’t stop at the Wyoming state line to take a picture of the “Welcome to Wyoming” sign.

“Seeing major congestion there due to selfies,” the agency wrote on Twitter.

Please use this picture of the Wyoming sign instead of stopping at the stateline. Seeing major congestion there due to selfies. pic.twitter.com/8OtdutLSBn

And thus began one of the most surreal days the state will witness in generations.

Traffic built hours before sunrise as cars headed to Wyoming and Nebraska, the closest places where Coloradans could experience the total eclipse. At 4:50 a.m., traffic in Cheyenne, resembled Denver rush hour at its worst. Shortly after 8 a.m., CDOT reported that there was a 10-mile backup on Interstate 25 in Wyoming near that state’s Glendo State Park.

Connie Diehl, of Fort Collins, said traffic was bumper-to-bumper on I-25 at 5 a.m., but she was undaunted. She’s a teacher and Monday was the first day of school.

“I feel so guilty,” she said, “but it should be a national holiday.”

“During the total eclipse, you can see things you can’t see ever.”

Those who made it into the totality zone likewise prepared to have their minds blown.

At Carhenge, a quirky roadside attraction in western Nebraska that is like the more famous Stonehenge but with classic cars instead of rocks, Craig Welling, of Broomfield, readied his camera to photograph the event. He looked around.

There, not far away, stood Jim Sikking, who ventured to Carhenge from San Antonio. Twenty-six years earlier, he had stumbled upon Carhenge during a summer solstice festival and decided to return for an eclipse. There was Dan Sherbeck from Bay City, Mich., who arrived with his father and planned to watch the eclipse, together, at the nearby Agate Fossil Beds National Monument.

“I’ve been talking about this for 25 years,” Sherbeck, who is only 37, said. “It’s been a long time, and the day is finally here.”

All around the high plains of Wyoming and western Nebraska, there were people where there usually aren’t.

The Wyoming Department of Transportation estimated that 217,000 more vehicles than average traveled on the state’s roads Sunday. The state only has about 206,000 registered cars.

In the microscopic town of Jay Em — population 16 — dozens of people crowded the community’s four streets. Locals sold commemorative envelopes with solar eclipse stamps affixed.

At Guernsey State Park in Wyoming, rangers had mowed a large grass areas to hold all the visitors. The row of portable toilets struggled to keep up with demand.

On the normally lonely two-lane roads across the Nebraska panhandle and eastern Wyoming, cars crowded the shoulder, starting in the predawn hours. People pitched lawn chairs. When watching a moment of cosmic convergence, any place with a view will do.

“The ultimate tailgate,” one guy called it.

“The light really gets weird, it gets desaturated,” Bill Reyna of New Jersey said, when explaining what drew him to the Nebraska-Wyoming border for what will be his sixth time viewing a total eclipse.

“When totality hits you,” he continued, “you get this primal instinct. You almost feel what the ancients felt.”

And in Alliance, Neb., with its day-to-day population of about 8,500, townspeople put on their best smiles for the tens of thousands who came to visit. They guessed as many as 25,000 people might descend on Alliance and on Carhenge, which is just a few miles away.

“I’ve lost all sense of space and time,” Jessica Hare, who works at the Carhenge visitor center, joked. “Everybody’s been reminding each other to be nice. … That’s our thing. Nebraska nice. OK, guys, it’s showtime.”

Ryckman is the senior editor of news for The Denver Post, which he joined in 2013. He spent about 22 years at The Associated Press as assistant managing editor, national editor and Moscow correspondent, among other duties. He has also served as managing editor at The Gazette in Colorado Springs and city editor at the Greeley Tribune.

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